This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: After the United Nations adopted a resolution in September 2026 endorsing a map that more fairly represents the size of Earth's landmasses, author and journalist Moky Makura of Africa No Filter—a main sponsor of the Correct the Map initiative—asked: "What else about Africa is the world underestimating that's also hidden in plain sight?" The initiative brought attention to the way continents are distorted by projections that display our rotund planet on two-dimensional maps, something that has long made Africa especially appear far smaller than it actually is. But it left another assumption untouched: that European maps of Africa—which became the basis of how we see African countries today—are based solely on the observations of the Europeans who made them.
As an expert on the map history of Africa, I know that this is a misconception which deserves rethinking. Recent research by myself and others on colonial-era mapping of West Africa demonstrates that much of the geographical information these maps show is based on African observations. It's just that Europeans largely took the credit.
Most African map traditions are undocumented or ephemeral. But ground and oral mapping were common in the precolonial period and often highly valued. European explorers relied upon these Indigenous mapping practices during their travels and sometimes incorporated them into their own maps.
For example, sections of French explorer Henri Duveyrier's 1861 map of the Sahara owed much to the maps drawn in the sand by his guide, Cheikh‐'Othmàn. Indeed, more than a third of Duveyrier's map is based on information provided by local sources. A common objective of mapping is to solve a spatial problem.
Route mapping is all about finding one's way between points A and B and determining the distances between them. For Europeans, it was important to know where African leaders resided or the most direct route to important trade centers. When European explorers and soldier-surveyors inquired, African guides, interpreters and merchants described the road ahead and often drew these routes on the ground with a stick.
Europeans valued African oral and ground-mapping practices for their contributions to knowledge; they were also useful for empire building. In his 1892 travel memoir, French Navy Lt. Louis-Gustave Binger reproduced the plan of Niellé, a city in contemporary northern Ivory Coast that was drawn on the ground by his interpreter, Fofana Diawé.
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